The information on this page is a summary description.
The full formal description is available here: Merksem Member
| Abbreviation | LiMe |
| Parent unit | Lillo Formation |
| Child units | |
| Lithological description | The Merksem Member, redefined by De Meuter & Laga (1976), is a grey-green fine-grained to medium fine-grained glauconiferous quartz sand. Coarse-grained sandy intercalations occur. The lower part of the unit is characterised by cross-bedded stratification and thin (1 up to 20 cm) clay layers, while the upper part is horizontally to subhorizontally stratified with rare clay lenses. Sandstone and siderite concretions have been observed. The bivalve Corbula gibba is the characteristic fossil in this member. The Merksem Member as defined here includes the Sables à Corbula described in boreholes of the Antwerp Campine in the Archives of the Geological Survey of Belgium. |
| Age | Late Pliocene. See Louwye et al. (2020) and references therein. |
| Thickness | Up to 15 m. At the Zandvlietsluis, a decrease in thickness resulted in an increased thickness of the overlying Zandvliet Member (Deckers et al., 2021). |
| Area of occurrence | From the Waasland area in the west, across the Port of Antwerp areas into the western Campine area. It presumably covers the western Campine area up to roughly the SW-NE line between Beerse and Weelde in the east. Here, the transition towards the time-equivalent Poederlee Member can be assumed (Louwye et al., 2020). |
| Type locality | The type locality is the village Merksem near Antwerp, and the type section was in a temporary outcrop of a fortification at Merksem at 4.4 m depth. In the type section in the Tunnel Kanaaldok (GSB 015W0304; DOV BGD015W0304) the member lies between 12 m and 3 m depth (Laga, 1972; Figure 61 1). On the nearby CPT (DOV GEO-20/034-S5), the Merksem Member is characterised by relatively low friction ratios (generally below 2% in the basal part towards 1% in the upper part) and fluctuating cone resistance values between 15 and 40 MPa. Type geophysical borehole is borehole Stabroek (GSB: 015W0216; DOV kb7d15w-B296) with the Merksem Member from 10 to 21 m depth (Figure 61 2). |
| Alternative names | /, including ‘Sables à Corbula’ |
| Authors | Deckers, J., & Louwye, S. |
| Date | 01/09/2023 |
| Cite as | Deckers, J., & Louwye, S., 2023. The Merksem Member, 01/09/2023. National Commission for Stratigraphy Belgium. http://ncs.naturalsciences.be/lithostratigraphy/Merksem-Member |
